Increasing EBITDA in aquaculture through go-to-market strategy

Client challenge

Plural Strategy helped a market-leading producer of aquaculture nutrition to develop a refreshed go-to-market strategy to increase profitability.

The client faced a challenge scaling up its production volume due to limited plant capacity.

Therefore, Plural Strategy were asked to analyze its existing go-to-market strategy and identify areas for improvement including:

Prioritize attractive customer segments, based on value potential and competitive positioning
Design winning value propositions to most effectively serve those segments
Develop a set of strategic initiatives to execute a refined go-to-market approach

Market opportunity assessment and segmentation

Our engagement began with mapping the addressable market opportunity where we established a set of customer segments based on evolving needs and behavior. Our assessment of the market indicated a clear shift in value towards certain segments, notably more professional, larger producers focusing on improving total lifecycle costs.

Our market work concluded that:

Our client was underpenetrated in market segments with the most attractive outlook
Our client’s current offering did not fully meet the needs of the most attractive segments, limiting its potential to increase share with these producers

Changing the commercial operating model

Following extensive market and customer work, we recommended that our client refined its value proposition to better serve large and mid-sized producers – underpinned by high quality feed products and value-added services. Value-added services, such as more comprehensive field-testing would allow our client to entrench itself with the customer and support producer efforts to improve farm productivity.

Our analysis also revealed that communication between account management and the technical sales team were not optimal, which resulted in underserving clients with a higher customer lifetime value. To address this, we recommended refocusing the client’s commercial team to priority customer segments with a strong integrated approach between key account management and the technical sales team.

Our work also proposed more efficient ways to serve less attractive segments with a lower-touch offering.

Conclusion

Our client implemented our recommended refined go-to-market strategy and commercial operating model, resulting in an increase of EBITDA by 15% within 12 months. The improvements in account management and technical sales led to increased customer satisfaction, resulting in increased share of wallet and higher lifetime value.

Likewise, our client successfully demonstrated product performance, by utilizing our comprehensive field-testing approach. This further enabled them to cater to changing market demands and establish industry leadership, by addressing a sophisticated customer base.

Plural’s data-driven approach to customer needs-based segmentation and layering on external market trends and competitive position played a critical role. It helped our client make informed strategic decisions on adapting its commercial operating model.